CALIFORNIA?
 

Hey, do California people post on CD anymore?* :)

Anyone have a status on the CA regional this weekend?

* intended as a joke, just looking for some standings from CA...

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

We are having great fun at the Sacramento Regional hosted by
UC Davis. Penalty rates are quite high, and some robots have had
one or more wheels broken off in high speed collisions (presumably
forbidden in the rules for 2005). If you have room to put fenders
on an open wheeled robot, it would be a good idea to do so...

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

I don't have a lot of specifics, but at the Sacramento (UC Davis) Regional, Teams 56, 973, 254, 114, 599, 1097 seem to be doing very well - forgive me if I'm leaving some teams out. One thing I noticed that is a huge deal is the amount of penalties. Luckily we have yet to draw a penalty, however, we've been allied with a few teams who weren't that familiar with the rules, especially harassing robots around the loading zones, and the human player not standing in their loading area when placing a tetra. I bet half of the first 20 matches had scores less that 10 points if not zero. There were a couple of zero point ties as well. I kinda sucks for your team if you do happen to when, but the opposing alliance commits so many penalties who get a very low QP score which lowers you in the tier rankings. In one match a robot flipped our robot with their wedge and committed several other penalties - so we one but with a QP of zero and had to fix our arm. Luckily we got it back together to play again.

We played eight matches today. In one match, Team 254's alliance got 77 points, which I think was the highest match score of the day. Beach Bots mentor received a well deserved WFA.

Anyhow, big surprise to me was the amount of penalties and low scores. No teams used the camera, and a couple of teams capped in auto mode with a starting tetra.

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

You bet I do. I am topped in post count by only three people. As for the regionals, I'm in SoCal so it'll be 4 weeks before I can give you an update on that.

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

I'm still here, my team will be heading to Phoenix next week and LA soon after.

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

Right now there are two undefeated teams, 254 at 9-0 and 1097 at 8-0 - if things continue like they are 1097 will probably be seeded higher because of the QP situation.
Don't cry for the Poofs. It is O.K. to be the lowest seeded undefeated team. As said previously lots of good cappers, so the alliance picks will be interesting.

The penalties are really surprising - some just didn't read the rules, I bet you could have won a lot of matches by just hanging out in your loading zones, and waiting for someone to run into you! High score I think was 79. The craziest thing that happened was that a human player touched a robot and was DQd, that tetra fell onto the field of play, but the refs forgot (or didn't know) they were supposed to remove it. We came along and scored the tetra on the center goal. (I guess tetras that don't count are supposed to flash a warning color or something?) After the match the center goal was de-scored, so we lost 23 points because of what we think was a referees error. We still won the match, so no harm done. I heard that the issue was under review, but wow.

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

Anyone have any more updates?

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

Yeah, in the finals the teams were 114, 254, 1097 against 1072 and 2 other teams (i forget their numbers :/) if i remember later i will post the other 2 teams.

If anyone has the full alliance list, please post it here.

Although the teams 254 and 1097 both went undefeated in the qualification rounds, the second alliance won both matches in the finals. (2-0)

Hope this helps

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

we won 2-0, sorry 1097 and 254 :). btw our allies with 245 and 766. We were undefeated in elinimations, woot our strategy is nice

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

Sorry, we wern't undefeated in qualifiers, he was refering to quarter and semi finals.

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

Here were the alliances:

1: 1097, 254, 114
2: 330, 56, 1422
3: 245, 766, 1072
4: 814, 973, 1147
5: 599, 1280, 753
6: 692, 393, 1696
7: 1671, 115, 1323
8: 610, 701, 1120

The number 3 alliance won.

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

Sac was a great regional. What it came down to was three capers can outscore two capers and a defender bot, unless the defender bot is 100% effective. The difference in score is dramatic, because if your alliance caps six times , but your opponents cap 8 - They may end up controlling 4 more rows than you. So based just on tetra points there is something like 21 to 25, but on final score the result is 75 to 21.

And I don't care how good your defense bot is, it can't stop two robots from
scoring. It might stop one, but not the other from hitting the center goal, and if it is successful defending the center, it is leaving another goal open for uncontested capping. In that finals every goal was capped at least once, most twice, a couple had three! So the only successful defense is to with gracious professionalism push one of your opponents over or completely disable them. I don't know about you, but I would never try to play the game this way. (someone who did was DQ'd and lost the match and the round.) Still the Quarter-Finals of elimination was the closest thing to Battle Bots I ever saw at a FIRST event.

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

well yes, but 610 did a great job 1st game of your quarters stopping both you and 1097. Didnt work so well later on though when oyu get a good strategy. In qualifiers, we had lots of trouble with bots messing up our capping. However we figured a way around it through good strategy. A pusher CAN work, but id rather have another capper

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

I know the match you're talking about, and it was indeed the most vicious match I've seen in competition. One robot managed to tip over two of the opposing robots, and was going for the third. The first two looked okay from the stands, because the contact point between the robots was relatively low. When this robot went for the third, though, they had their arm pushing firmly against the upper joint of the opposing robot's arm, which is not allowed. I think that the first two attacks were relatively GP, and would have been an acceptable strategy, but the third one merited the disqualification.

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

Actually, many of the team 114ers agree with you - we don't much like the defensive aspect of the game. However, after being asked by the field teams of both the Poofs and the Jesuits to play defense for the extent of the elimination tournament, we went with that and tried our best to keep the others out of the way. Unfortunately, even with our maneuverability (swivel drive) we couldn't keep all three cappers down. Probably a somewhat flawed strategy - but who knows, maybe the three of us can give it another run with a few changes at San Jose!

I'd like to thank both Site 3 and the Poofs for picking us! We had a great time playing with you guys, and it sure was a pickup after we had such slanted qualifying pairings!

And, congrats to the alliance that beat us - you guys played an awesome game! I think it was a bit closer than the scores showed - a few key tetras were holding a bunch of rows for you guys - but I think that the final rounds were some of the only ones where I could say that I felt that all the teams played well and that there weren't any gross miscalls by the referees.


See everyone at San Jose!

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

yeah what is it with those slanted qualifying pairings???
i wish FIRST had a better ranking system which reflected more your own robots capabilities. this would be more beneficial in the alliance team selections because i think many teams are not picked because they have a low ranking when really they are actually a lot stronger then many robots ranked higher.
we felt that way this year and i am sure other teams did too.
i guess any "individual" would be difficult to score though.
what are your thoughts???

Re: CALIFORNIA?
 

I don't see how you push a robot over, or break its wheels off, with GP,
but then I take your statement in the spirit it was intended...
I second the "battle bots" statement. The entire regional had a strong
flavor of this. We lost many wheel axles to high speed impacts, most
if not all of which were clearly done with the intent of disablement. One
student came over to our team nursing two broken axles after one match
and indicated that he took the several more hits at the third axle
because we were still moving and able to cap a goal... A push
without a high speed impact is certainly an allowable defense strategy,
but when the push fails to move the robot backing up for a high speed
impact to take a wheel off is not allowable in the 2005 rules and is a
bankrupt strategy in any event. Pulling robots over by entangling arms
is specifically against the rules. Any team that repeatedly does this sort
of thing will get an indelible, and well deserved, reputation for it.

We put fenders on our robot after running to the situation
with broken wheel axles, but some robots are configured to hit wheels
just an inch or two from the carpet. To build fenders to defend against
this you have to sacrifice ground clearance required to get over the
tubing used in the goals. Are we supposed to design robots with flip
out porcupine spikes? It would look good really impressive in battle bots...
I think that any team that thinks robot disablement is a viable strategy
is forgetting their GP, and they need to take a serious look at themselves.

We learned a lot about building a robot that is resistant to malicious
destruction at the Sac regional, and will benefit from the experience,
but it certainly left a bad taste. We hope that the teams that pursued
a destructive strategy, and got themselves and their allianced DQed out
of the finals, have also learned from their experience... It would be nice
if the FIRST rules for robot construction were adjusted so that contact
points between robots were regulated, so that pushing and shoving can
occur without attendant destruction and turnovers.